I  have reviewed over women-led startup applications. I have funded few of them. And I have watched some fail within months.

The painful truth? Funding without mentorship is not empowerment. It is abandonment.

One founder I deeply believed in received lakhs in grant money. She was brilliant, passionate, and hardworking. Eleven months later, she called me crying. Her startup was shutting down. “No one taught me how to handle a co-founder who stopped showing up,” she said. “No one told me I would need a lawyer, a therapist, and an accountant.”

I failed her. I gave her money but not infrastructure.

That is why I changed everything at The Girl Foundation. Today, every woman entrepreneur we fund gets an 18-month mentorship commitment. Monthly reviews cover not just revenue but also mental health, negotiation skills, and family support systems. We call it “slow acceleration.”

The results speak for themselves: 89% retention rate, compared to the national average of 54% for women-led startups.

So here is my advice to every woman founder reading this: do not chase the biggest cheque. Chase the person who will sit with you when the cheque runs out. That is real acceleration. Everything else is just a transaction.